The 1066 Country Walk across East Sussex offers a unique opportunity to follow in the footsteps of William the Conqueror and King Harold's armies, with the British Museum's blockbuster Bayeux tapestry exhibition opening soon. The 31-mile route begins at Pevensey, ends in Rye, and passes through the town of Battle, the probable site of the Battle of Hastings in October 1066, where about 2,000 Normans, 4,000 Anglo-Saxons, and 700 horses died, according to various sources.
Detour to Camber Castle
On the final day, the author and companions detour past the ruin of Camber Castle, pressed into the flatland by a big, heavy sky. Begun in 1512, finished in 1544, and demolished in the 1640s by parliamentary forces during the English civil war, the castle serves as a reminder of vulnerability and hubris—the waves and threats of invasions this coast has seen.
Walking the Pevensey Levels
The hike begins on the Pevensey Levels, marshland first drained in 772, now home to sheep and cattle, and water spiders living underwater in air-filled webs. The ground is pocked with endless impressions of horseshoes, prompting the author to remark, "It's almost as if an army came this way." The group laughs, but only because they missed that army by 959 years.
History commands an immediacy outdoors that it doesn't in books. Walking at the same time of year as the Normans—September—the author notes the blackthorn heavy with sloes, blackbirds feasting on blood-red hawthorn berries, and the wind in the rushes alongside the River Pevensey. The landscape offers the same russet, sage, and ochre hues as the Bayeux tapestry.
Four-Day Itinerary
The 1066 Walk covers 31 miles over four days: Pevensey to Herstmonceux (6 miles), Herstmonceux to Battle (11 miles), Battle to Icklesham (9 miles), and Icklesham to Rye (5 miles). The second day is the longest and steepest, yet the author's favourite, as it establishes a pattern of temporal shifts.
The route passes through Wartling Wood, carpeted in acorns and lined by blackberries, the neat village of Boreham Street, a holloway guarded by beeches, and fields with windswept horizons. Morning tea at the Ash Tree Inn in the hamlet of Brownbread Street augments the feeling of a settled, well-inhabited landscape.
Temporal Quilt of Past and Present
The route is designed to call the distant past to mind, and with every shift of scene, there is a slippage of time. One moment walkers are on a contemporary street, then slip through a hedge into fields or woods, out of the present into time immemorial. The constant weaving in and out of darkness and light, wildness and cultivation, creates a temporal quilt sewn with footsteps. Few other walkers break the spell.
Elasticity of time is most apparent on Tent Hill, where, as Mike puts it, "the reward to effort ratio is quite good." Sources suggest one army or the other camped here. Instead of troops, the group discovers an ancient horse chestnut with branches so immense they have touched the ground and put down roots, creating a family of trees around a living central ancestor.
Fungi and Sculptures on the Route
On day three, the group sets forth from Abbey View Cottages, which offers a view of Battle Abbey's towers. A plunge off a country lane leads to a bridle path in Battle's Great Wood, where Mike gives a mushroom tutorial: fly agarics, edible boletes and parasols, and great penny buns, which he calls "the Rolls-Royce of mushrooms."
The temporal hopscotch continues as they cross a golf course, then deep countryside with oasthouses tucked into hill folds. Shortly before the Three Oaks pub, they come upon one of artist Keith Pettit's 10 Bayeux tapestry-inspired sculptures: six hollow, Celtic-carved oak pillars planted inside with hawthorn, forming a circle of growing, living wonder on a hillcrest.
Final Hike to Rye
The final hike brings the group to medieval Winchelsea, rebuilt by Edward I in the 1280s after the original town was washed away. They traverse apple orchards in mellowness reminiscent of Dutch landscape paintings. The modern stained glass windows of St Thomas church, created by Douglas Strachan as memorials after World War I, bloom like colour-saturated rainbows.
From Winchelsea, they head to Rye across silted-in coastal lowland that would have been underwater in Edward's day. With a final shift of perspective from pastureland to townscape, they arrive in pretty, comfortable Rye, town of Henry James, antique shops, and good food. The group is more energised than exhausted, grateful they didn't have to conquer this place with anything more than their imaginations.
The Bayeux tapestry is on display at the British Museum from 10 September to 11 July 2027; tickets are now on sale. Abbey View Cottages sleeps four, from £200 a night; rooms at the Ship Inn in Rye from £75.
